ZX Computing


Cagara
By Players
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in ZX Computing #30

Cagara

You have been teleported to the land of Cagara by managing to get yourself caught in an evil gypsy's crystal ball. Presumably, you crossed her palm with cupro-nickel instead of silver. The only way you can regain your freedom is to explore the castles, mazes and jungles in Cagara and find the magic chalice. A reasonable if hardly original storyline. An element of originality is brought into play by the fact that you are accompanied on this adventure by your sulky pet hamster called Eric who for some strange reason has sprouted helicopter blades!

Not that you would notice, for he is depicted on-screen as a small red blob with spikes on who always seems to run off the first screen, never to be seen again. This is a trifle unfortunate as he is supposed to fight your battles for you. Instead, when you (represented on screen by a medium-sized blob) are chasing through a maze and a monster appears (a big blob) you tend to get killed automatically as it can fly through hedges and you can't. One contact by a monster and it is curtains for you - game over time. There are other ways of defending yourself.

Scattered around the grounds are a number of objects. You can only carry one of these at a time and must work out which thing does what. This is made more difficult for you as the items are such small blobs that they are instantly recognisable. The only one that looked like anything was a pink castle that teleported you to another castle.

The rooms have equally non-stunning graphics, the highlight of the jungle chambers being whether they have two, three or four exits. The game looks as if it was written when the Spectrum first came out. Cagara is so bad, it is almost worth buying for that very reason.